Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdoes?

Caroline Phillips cranks out tunes on a seldom heard folk instrument the hurdy gurdy, a.k.a. the wheel fiddle. A searching, Basque melody follows her fun lesson on its unique anatomy and 1,000 year history.

Yet the EU establishment seems bent on pursuing business as usual. In the parliament, a vocal but fragmented minority of critics, cranks, and bigots is likely to push the center right and center left groups, which still have a combined majority, to club together even more closely.

This is not because China poses a great military threat war with the United States, or even Japan, is only a fantasy in the minds of a few ultra nationalist cranks and paranoiacs. It is in the realm of ideas that China s political economic model, regardless of its environmental consequences, is scoring victories and looking like an attractive alternative to liberal democratic capitalism.